Based on their unique properties, carbon nanotubes (CNT) are being investigated for use in a variety of fields such as in electronics, displays, photovoltaics, and energy storage. One particularly beneficial application would be in field-effect transistors (FETs) for future complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic technology nodes.
Circuits including CNT-based FETs often exhibit high threshold voltage (Vt) variability, rendering them useless for practical use. Given the known sensitivity of CNTs to individual electrical charges or dipoles nearby, this variability may be due to randomly distributed charges or dipoles at material surfaces or interfaces near the CNT. See, for example, Cao et al., “Origins and Characteristics of the Threshold Voltage Variability of Quasiballistic Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistors,” ACS Nano 9, pgs. 1936-1944 (February 2015).
Therefore, techniques for minimizing electrical disturbances of the CNTs in these devices would be desirable.